The Seinfeld Strategy – Don’t Break the Chain

The Seinfeld Strategy – Don’t Break the Chain

May 8, 2016

So a few days ago I was catching up with reading blogs and I can across one from James Clear about tasking techniques which was interesting in itself but also hidden in the blog was a link to a previous blog he’d written. Now this really did catch my attention because it referred to a strategy developed by the American comedian Jerry Seinfeild. http://jamesclear.com/stop-procrastinating-seinfeld-strategy

Many years ago we spent a few months living in California working in a winery and discovered that we could watch Seinfeld almost anytime we put the television on and that compared with most of the offerings on the 400 TV channels Seinfeld really was very entertaining and funny, we became a little bit addicted and on return to the UK purchased a DVD boxset so that we could carry on our addiction.

Now the Seinfeld Strategy refers to his technique for motivation himself to write every day. The idea is that you try to create the longest chain that you can by doing an activity each day and then putting a cross on a yearly calendar. You don’t worry about breaking the chain, the idea is just to focus on each day to try and create the longest chain you can. If you break the chain then it’s okay because you just start again. By the end of the year you should end up with a calendar with chains of crosses. Get the picture? Perhaps this helps:

I can see that if you are visual this can be really motivating to see each day your chain getting longer and longer. Your focus is on not breaking the chain rather than on results. Why not choose one thing that you’d like to improve on and give it a go. My chain is for doing 15 mins exercise a day…